Bad defense, penalties sink Flyers

Poor defense and another night filled with bad penalties put the Flyers in an early hole and they never got out of it. They dropped their first trip back to Winnipeg, losing 6-4 to the Jets Saturday afternoon.

Just like the last meeting, the Winnipeg offense was cutting through the Flyers zone, putting puck after puck on Sergei Bobrovsky.

The young Russian netminder stopped 34 of 39 shots. It was his fourth straight start with allowing at least three goals.

Part of the constant pressure for the Jets came due to the constant time with the man advantage. In a very sloppy game for both sides, power play goals wound up hurting the Flyers more than it helped.

Coming into the night already averaging a league-high 17-plus penalty minutes, they added 28 more minutes to their season total.

Bryan Little got the scoring rolling right away for the Jets, finding the back of the net on a power play goal five minutes in. He followed up his first almost immediately, beating Bobrovsky again only two minutes later.

Andrew Ladd gave the Jets a 3-0 lead on their second power play goal. It was one of two power play goals the Jets scored in the first period, getting 18 shots total in the frame.

Philadelphia’s power play finally got them on the board in the first. Chris Pronger fired a shot on net went off of Scott Hartnell for his first goal of the night, cutting the deficit to 3-1.

The second period started out just as bad for the Flyers, who were again out shot in the period, 15-10. But the penalties finally caught up with Philadelphia, who saw 20 minutes in penalties and found themselves in a 5-2 hole.

Matt Read made it a 5-3 game with 12:28 left in the game.

Read’s stick would stay hot for one more tally, sniping a shot past Ondrej Pavelic with just over two minutes to play but that was all the Flyers could manage the rest of the way.

It was the fourth straight game Read scored a goal in. In the last four games, he has five goals and one assist.

Hartnell’s assists on Read’s first goal gave him a three-point night and a third star performance, scoring the first two goals for the Flyers.